Attempted Sweet Potater Tots - FAIL

My attempt to make sweet potater tots based on the potater tot recipe. Uh, yeah, that didn't do so great.

So let's review the failure, shall I?

For ingredients, I used a japanese sweet potato (I like these better for frying than regular garnet jewell yams or pink sweet potatoes.). Then I grated about a 1 inch peeled piece of fresh ginger and added that, along with a teeny bit of salt. The flavor of this was FREAKING AWESOME. Very sweet with a little flowery smell to it from the ginger. No real heat added. I loved it...in the small pieces that weren't burnt beyond recognition.

To make it, I grated the sweet potato, squeezed out the water, mixed it with the other ingredients and then cooked it at the same temp and for the same times as the Potater Tots recipe.


And here's how that FAILED.
1. Squeezing the water out - Without the extra moisture and no added starch or binders, these did not in any way stay together like the potatoes. With the potatoes, once a tot has been cooked on one side, they stay together. Sweet potato shreds stayed in shreds completely separated so that turning them over was like flipping hashbrowns. On a second attempt, I didn't squeeze the water out, and that worked better.


2. The temperature -  Hooo baby, not a good idea. Pan on high? Burned the sweet potatoes. Oven at 425F for 8-10 minutes? Holy crud did that burn the sweet potatoes. I had little blacked pucks with a little sweet potato in the middle. Ouch. One thing that helped - turned stove down a little and put the tots on with a lid for 1 minute, to help steam the middle a little. That did have them cooked by the end. Turned down the oven heat to 400 for the second batch, and that worked better, but still burned. We'll have to see the next time I get these. Or I'll try it with regular sweet potatoes and see if it's different.



My Conclusion:
I think this recipe could become something really tasty and great, but it still needs some playing with (or rather, I need to learn how to treat the ingredients so I don't destroy them like Godzilla stomping on a Sweet Potato city). I think I'll have to research how to fry sweet potatoes and see if there are any suggestions from other cooks for temperatures and types of cooking that work best with these root veggies.